How To Enable Or Disable Touchpad Gestures In Windows 8

It’s a well known fact that Windows 8 user interface has been optimized for touch screen and some features such as the Start screen and Modern UI apps has specially been designed for touch screen devices and it even includes some cool touch gestures.

Users who are running Windows 8 on a touch screen device probably know that one can swipe-in from the right-edge of the screen to see the Charms bar, swipe-in from the left edge of the screen to switch between apps, and swipe-in from the top edge to see the app bar.

Just like touch-screen users, notebook and netbook users who are running Windows 8 with a compatible touchpad can also use gestures to switch between apps and see the Charms bar. On a compatible notebook, you can move your finger from the right-edge of the touch pad to activate the Charms bar, swipe-in from the top edge to see the app bar and swipe-in from left edge to see switch between apps (see all touchpad gestures in Windows 8).

These touchpad gestures are really helpful for users who don’t like to use keyboard shortcuts. But there are some users who really don’t like these touchpad gestures and want to disable them.

In this guide, we are going to show you how to disable swiping from the top, swiping from the left, and swiping from the right gestures in Windows 8 on a notebook. Please note that this guides is only for notebooks/netbooks using Synaptics touchpad.

To disable touchpad gestures:

Step 1: Before starting the actual procedure, we suggest you create a manual system restore point as we are going to edit the Registry.

Step 2: Copy the following registry code in Notepad and then save the file as Touch.reg file. Make sure that you save the file with .reg extension.

Comments

cool it worked but I had to do it manually in the regeditor. I doubleclicked the .reg file and it said it added the values but when restarted it didn’t work so I followed the path in the editor and modified the “ActionType” values to 0 manually and it worked!!!!

So I actually liked the gesture where I can swipe inwards from the LEFT and change between my recent apps. And that is the one touchscreen gesture that seems to have been disabled, and I can’t find a way to turn it back on. I’ve check touch settings, mouse settings, and navigation settings, but I can’t find it anywhere. How can I reenable that gesture?

After being forced to refresh I now have the same original touchpad problems. Fear the worst. Touchpad gesture adjustment not among hidden icons, nor in PC settings. Where is it? Had to reinstall my Microsoft Lifecam so impossible to locate it. I have Windows 8 and HP Notebook 15. Last time I searched for the installed Lifecam for 1 and a half hours, contacted HP Support who gave up after half an hour. 2 days later I stumbled across it. I have searched Microsoft Forums, HP Forums, googled. The problem is not addressed. The faintest touch sends the computer off in the direction of its not my choice. The original arbitrary hypertexting problem is already a fact again as too is uncontrollable webpage access by jumping around. This is driving me crazy again. PLEASE HELP.

I have the first Surface. Since it has done a couple of updates, I now have a prompt on the left side that says, “swipe inward from the right side to go back to the previous app” AND IT WONT GO AWAY! I’ve tried everything! HELP! I cant watch a movie or see anything I open under it. It wont go away and it wont move.

I was about to make the registry changes, but decided to poke a little further based on Jon’s comment….and voila!

While I didn’t have the menu he described, I had it buried a little further :

Go to Control Panel > Mouse > Device Settings tab. Select the Synaptics device, and click Settings button. From left menu, select Edge Swipe. On next screen, there is only option to toggle…. Enable Swipe or Disable Swipe.

My Toshiba Satellite L75D has an Elan Smart Pad touchpad and I just found, after a bit of searching, that I can alter any of the pad ‘gestures’ by clicking either the Toshiba Pointing Device icon in the System Tray (by the clock in lower right corner) or by following the path Control Panel > Mouse. In the Mouse Properties box, the ELAN tab contains an Options button which allows changes to the gestures.

On mine I found it: right swipe to open the charms. Click on Settings. At the bottom is a “Change PC Settings”. Click on this. Go to the “General” tab. You can here turn off the “When I swipe from the left switch to my most recent app”.

-Show hidden icons (little arrow next to the date/time in the bottom right) -in here should be the service/app for your touchpad; mine was called Asus Smart Gesture -click the icon or right click>open/show to bring up your touchpad software/app window -there were multiple settings here and I was able to turn off swipe to charm bar and swipe to another app

Really, it’s just like changing the settings for a Logitech mouse/keyboard, or any enthusiast peripheral hardware.h

If the registry code doesn’t work for you, look at your registry to see if your touch pad is connected as a different device. Mine was connected as PS2_1 . Here is modified code that will work in that case:

If you dislike Windows 8 Metro and want to return to using the old standard “DESKTOP”. install “Classic Start Menu 3.6.7”, it’s a free app from http://www.Classicshell.net. NO SPYWARE or other BS!

Setup will take less than 3 minutes. Select the start menu you like best(Windows Classic, Windows XP, Windows Vista/Windows 7). Then Click “All Settings” and click the “Windows 8 Settings” tab, put a check mark next to “Skip Metro Screen” option. Now move down to “Disable Active Corner” and click the “All” option this will get rid the METRO Start Screen and the right/side Charm popup.

As a side note, I removed/deleted as many of the Metro apps before installing Classic Start Menu. If you want to do this just point to the Metro App then right click your mouse and select delete. Some Apps can’t be deleted so you’ll have to click disable.

If you have any questions or need assistance with the setup … leave me a post.

Oh … don’t be fooled into buying the upcoming Windows Update for $125, if you like Classic Start Menu … let them know!

This worked great as the control panel settings didn’t allow me to change gestures even after I downloaded the synaptics driver supposedly to contain options to change gesture settings for Windows 8 which of course it didn’t. I was wondering if you had the registry code to perform the same process except this time to disable the ‘touch tap’ function? I think that is by far the worst of them all as it taps outside of text boxes when I’m typing or taps inside text boxes when I’m typing which starts randomly adding text wherever the cursor happens to be if I touch the touchpad by mistake. It also opens random items and folders when I just want to scroll across a page. If you could provide me with a code via email, I would greatly appreciate it.

I’m hoping someone can help me – I do NOT want to do the reg edit, & I saw the correct screen yesterday while trying to fix a different problem, & now I can’t seem to find it

I’ve tried all the fixes mentioned in the comments here, but I don’t have any of the paths that are mentioned.

I need to turn off this stupid swipe-up-for-fullscreen crap, but I can’t find the correct screen again, no matter how much I look for it (I’ve probably spent 2 hours trying to retrace my steps) The screen I had found allowed me to toggle all the different mousepad gestures, so I could leave some on & turn others off.

Thanks so much mike. i hate this smart tablet bullshit options. a computer is not meant to be a touch my screen ipad-like wannabe device. i cant stand it when they try to incorporate a million and one different types of settings into one universal device. hoping it will all stay afloat. . and your comment on how to disable the worst of the worst that they put into windows 8 is a lifesaver. thanks bro.

I was about to make the registry changes, but decided to poke a little further based on Jon’s comment….and voila!

While I didn’t have the menu he described, I had it buried a little further :

Go to Control Panel > Mouse > Device Settings tab. Select the Synaptics device, and click Settings button. From left menu, select Edge Swipe. On next screen, there is only option to toggle…. Enable Swipe or Disable Swipe.